Digital lighting technologies, i.e. illumination based on semiconductor light sources, such as light-emitting diodes (LEDs), offer a viable alternative to traditional fluorescent, HID, and incandescent lamps. Functional advantages and benefits of LEDs include high energy conversion and optical efficiency, durability, lower operating costs, and many others. Recent advances in LED technology have provided efficient and robust full-spectrum lighting sources that enable a variety of lighting effects in many applications. Some of the fixtures embodying these sources feature a lighting module, including one or more LEDs capable of producing different colors, e.g. red, green, and blue, as well as a processor for independently controlling the output of the LEDs in order to generate a variety of colors and color-changing lighting effects.
Lighting units, such as LED-based lighting units, may be controlled by mobile computing devices such as smart phones or tablets. For example, a user may operate a graphical user interface (GUI) to select and control various lighting units in a building or room using her smart phone. In some instances, it may be desirable to enable such a user to quickly and easily control only lighting units in the immediate area around her, e.g., those lighting units that actually affect a lighting effect consumed by the user. Requiring the user to operate the GUI to select these local lighting units adds an additional step for the user, who may simply want to create more or less light at her current location quickly and easily.
On a mobile device such as a smart phone or tablet, accessing applications, including lighting control applications, may be cumbersome. The mobile device may first need to be unlocked (in some cases requiring a password) and/or otherwise “awakened.” Then, a user may be required to find and open the lighting control application, and may even have to configure the lighting control application manually to be able to control a particular lighting unit. These steps may be more complex and cumbersome than simply locating and adjusting manual lighting controls associated with the lighting units. Some mobile computing devices include, on lock screens, quick launch icons for commonly-used and/or low risk applications. These icons may be actuated (e.g., dragged upwards on a touch screen) to initiate the application without having to unlock the touch screen. However, these icons still require at least some user interaction.
Thus, there is a need in the art to provide systems, methods, apparatus and computer-readable media that make it easier and/or more convenient to implement a lighting property adjustment at lighting units that affect local lighting effect consumed by a user. There is also a need in the art to make it easier and/or more convenient to access user inputs for controlling lighting units.